Debut of New-Look U.S. Hockey Team Gets Positive Reviews

“A win is a win is a win,” coaches are fond of saying. True enough, and that’s what Team USA accomplished Tuesday in its 3-1 victory over Switzerland to open the men’s hockey tournament at the Vancouver Olympics. The U.S. wasn’t dominant, though, struggling to find flow after coming together only on Monday.

After its disastrous eighth-place showing four years ago in Turin, the U.S. has retooled its roster, dumping a lot of veterans in favor of new blood. Sports Illustrated’s Michael Farber likes the makeup of the U.S. squad, which got its first goal off the stick of a fourth-line player, David Backes, after a couple of nifty moves. “The goal was precisely the kind of wizardry Team USA was expecting from its small and swift forwards, not one of the fourth-line monsters expected to do the heavy lifting,” Farber writes. “While it is difficult to measure the import of the opening victory over a moderately dangerous hockey country — Switzerland 2, Canada 0 in Turin 2006 — you can measure this: The three American scorers averaged 6’3″ and 218, roughly the size of NFL strong safeties. This was not glitz. This was Team USA GM Brian Burke’s Hungry Man Hockey.”

Salon’s Ethan Sherwood Strauss sees a new Cold War percolating between Canada and Russia, especially with Alex Ovechkin filling the role of Russian hero for Canadian fans to boo.

There’s a big quirk among hockey players that you might have noticed watching Tuesday’s games. The majority of Canadians shoot left (the blade curves to the right) while the majority of Americans shoot right, Jeff Z. Klein writes in the New York Times.

In women’s snowboard cross, it was a heartbreaking end for Lindsey Jacobellis — again. Four years ago she had the gold medal won until she fell, recovering enough to take silver. No such luck on Tuesday, when Jacobellis landed poorly after the first jump, veered off-course and was disqualified. Yahoo’s Jeff Passan recounts Jacobellis’s disastrous attempt at earning gold, and redemption.

The Vancouver Province’s Ed Willes catches up with Steve Rechtschaffner, who in the early 1990s invented snowboard cross, a sport that’s developed into a multimillion-dollar industry and has a rabid following.

The Games haven’t gone smoothly for Vancouver: weather delays, a lack of snow on ski runs, malfunctioning arms on the Olympic cauldron — you get the picture. The Washington Post’s Tracee Hamilton calls it “the Olympic flame-out.”

Much more Olympic coverage is available here, including video of Albergotti’s trying out of the biathlon.

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The expected flurry of deals before Thursday’s NBA trade deadline already has begun. The first trade sent Marcus Camby from the Los Angeles Clippers to the Portland Trail Blazers in exchange for Travis Outlaw, Steve Blake and cash. ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz crunches the numbers to see how the deal will play out for the Clippers.

Elsewhere in the NBA, Denver Nuggets coach George Karl has taken a leave to battle throat and neck cancer, leading the Denver Post’s Dave Krieger to write that “the Nuggets’ season has just gone from fun and games to life and death. If there was any question about their unity, there isn’t anymore.”

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The old Los Angeles Rams once traded 11 players to get their hands on Les Richter, a punishing linebacker who was voted to the Pro Bowl eight times in nine seasons. After his football career, Richter played a significant role in Nascar’s success. Now almost 80 years old, Richter walks with a hunch, battles pain and has dementia. But inexplicably, the man with the firm handshake isn’t in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Jerry Crowe writes in the Los Angeles Times.

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Coaches Tim Whipple and Bailey Harris have built successful high-school basketball programs in South Carolina, combining for five state championships in the past two decades. While the coaches admire each other’s program, they remain bitter rivals and have never developed a friendship away from the game, the State’s Ron Morris writes.

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If you’re of a certain vintage, you’ll remember collecting baseball cards as a kid. Card collecting has seen much better days, so the Topps Company is trying to boost interest among 30- to 60-year-olds through a new promotion, one that includes a new set of cards for 2010 called “The Cards Your Mother Threw Out,” Richard Sandomir writes in the New York Times, and the chance to snag Mickey Mantle’s 1952 rookie card.

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The life of an elite athlete involves hours of grueling workouts. That’s the way it is for Aaron Heo, a Pennsylvania speed skater whose workout normally runs 3.5 hours and can include up to 2,000 squats and lots of 1,000-meter sprints. Heo, whose goal is the Olympics, is only 10 years old, Lenny Bernstein writes in the Washington Post.

– Tip of the Fix cap to reader Don Hartline and fellow Fixer David Roth.

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Comments (2 of 2)

The dominant hand holds the top of the stick for effective one-handed play. Most stick play is on defense, and one-handed play is frequent on defense. Using the dominant hand to hold the top of the shaft maximizes my reach and one-handed dexterity.

3:21 pm February 17, 2010

Dave wrote:

Unfortunately, don't think the US is in with much of a shot, this year more than ever. The Canadian and Russian teams are just far more skilled and cohesive, it would take another 'miracle on ice' for the US to get anywheer near the gold. The US just doesn't have the offensive depth to be able to compete.

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